


Groove

by 2x2verse (agent_florida)



Series: Collusion [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Age Difference, Anal Fingering, Daddy Kink, Facials, Hand Jobs, Intimacy, M/M, Oral Sex, Spanking, in/experience
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-19
Updated: 2013-09-23
Packaged: 2017-11-19 01:05:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/567300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_florida/pseuds/2x2verse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don’t notice the skips and gaps between you like you thought you would. Yeah, there’s a few scratches sometimes, a needle skipping the groove, but the two of you mix well together. Your vocals, of course, but his backbeat, his bass, the beat of your heart keeping time.</p><p>--</p><p>Concurrent with As Natural As. "Chose not to use archive warnings" because Dave is only 17.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

You’re fucking nervous but on the surface you look calm and ready. There’s trembling in your fingers already, and your palms are sweaty.

John’s asleep in his room. You’re supposed to be asleep, too, but what John forgot to tell you was that the nights in Washington, even in the summer, were cold. Maybe not to the Egberts—they’ve lived here forever—but to someone from the sweltering south, it’s freezing cold, and you swear your nipples are so hard you could cut glass with them.

Of course, this leads to you pressing them down urgently with even-colder fingers, then praying that no one notices under your thin cotton undershirt. Your flannel sweatpants aren’t cutting it; you have goosebumps everywhere, even places where the sun don’t shine. But you told yourself you were going to do it, and you’ve been psyching yourself up for this for weeks, and you’re never going to get another chance at this.

John’s dad is still downstairs in his study. The door’s closed, but the light’s on, and with your oversensitive ears, you can hear a pen scritching against paper. Diligent. Studious. Attentive. Perfectionist. Can’t let it wait until the morning. Or maybe he’s just an insomniac like you. You almost don’t want to disturb him now, but you swallow, hard, against the nervous lump in your throat and rap softly against the door to his office. “Mister Egbert?”

“I’ll be there in a minute, John,” he says, sounding a little exasperated.

Your hands are shaking again. “It’s not John,” you whisper back through the door. Then, just so there was no question, “It’s Dave.”

The sounds behind the door stop. Then John’s dad is opening the door, the warm desk light leaving his frame in silhouette. Without your shades, everything seems too bright, even though you know his light has to be dim. “What is it, Dave?”

“Wanted to talk to you.” It sounds so lame now that it’s actually coming out of your mouth. On paper, in your head, planning this out, you didn’t sound quite so dumb.

“Of course,” John’s dad says, but there’s a hint of puzzlement under his tone. “Come on in.” He steps aside, and then you can see the plush comfort of this room. It’s completely and utterly his: Spartan in its adornments, with the most understated masculinity you’ve ever seen. When you walk in, your bare feet sink into the plush carpet. Breathing in greets you with the scent of mahogany and pipe smoke; his pipe’s actually sitting at the corner of his desk, smoke still curling up from it.

You feel like you don’t belong here, but he’s invited you in, and it would be rude not to accept his invitation. “This is weird, isn’t it,” you say on reflex. It certainly feels weird enough. To keep John from waking up, you shut the door as quietly as you can behind you. Now that you’re in here, though, you don’t know what to do with yourself. Do you sit? Where can you sit? There’s an armchair here, or the desk, but neither of them feel right. You stand instead, fidgeting to yourself, rubbing your arms to keep warm and shifting from foot to foot.

“Please, don’t feel awkward around me,” John’s dad says warmly. His voice is smooth, rich and deep. When he passes by you to sit, you can smell the sharpness of dry cleaning still clinging to his collar, aftershave over that. You can’t concentrate when he does—anything, really. “I’m always available to talk to you.”

Something in your chest goes a little sideways, but you quash it down by tightening your arms around yourself and giving yourself a reality check. He probably just thinks of you as his son’s friend—his son’s rich, pampered, lazy, unmannerly, rude, crass friend. You’re probably not helping the interpretation, what with your look, but at least you ditched the shades for this little rendezvous. “Yeah, I.” You had an excuse for being in here, you know you did, it’s just eluding you for the moment. “Needed to talk about this with someone other than Bro.”

“Please, sit,” Mr. Egbert says, and he gestures to the ottoman in front of the armchair. He sits back down in his desk chair, but swivels around so he’s facing you. It just now strikes you that he’s not wearing his usual hat; his hair lays in perfectly-groomed salt-and-pepper swirls. “Now. What’s the problem?”

You sit heavily and sigh for emphasis, even though he has to know you don’t mean it. “Bro won’t even talk to me about this shit. And let me tell you how hells to the awkward this is to talk to you about it, but it’s like I need some kinda strong father figure in my life right now while I figure shit out. Did I say father figure? What I meant was daddy issues. Lalonde would have a fucking field day with this.”

“Whoa, Dave.” John’s dad’s voice cuts in and dissolves your rapid-fire babbling. “Slow down. What do you need me for?”

What a loaded question. You don’t even know where to start with that, but you have to try. While you think about how you want your words to come out this time, you plop your ass down where he told you to. At least you can follow orders. “I think I’m gay,” is what ends up coming out of your mouth.

A silence settles in the room. You wish you had one of your shitty sords with you so you could cleave your way through it. Even Mr. Egbert could smash it to pieces. But no, it hangs there, delicate and ethereal. You know how you want this conversation to end, but you forgot about the part where John’s dad has the capability to choose his words for himself. And after all that tension, what he chooses to say is, “It’s okay, Dave.”

“I mean, I always thought Batman had the hots for Robin, and my bro has that shitty pornotube website with his fucking fetish puppet snuff gorn or whatever the hell he does on there—wait, what?”

“It’s okay,” he says again, and his voice is so warm that you feel it seep into your bones. “You’re attracted to who you’re attracted to, and that’s that.”

“You make it sound so simple,” you grumble at him, still crossing your arms petulantly. “I just—y’know, if I am, I woulda known before now, right? I mean, I’m almost seventeen, shouldn’t I be buttfucking my way into faggot hell or something by now?”

“Dave.” Once again, he makes you fall silent with just his voice. “Sometimes, it takes a while to find these things out. I had no idea until I was in my late twenties.”

Okay, that one makes you stop cold in your tracks, and your mouth goes dry as the gears jam in your mind. John’s dad—is gay. John’s dad is _gay_. You’re going to short-circuit, and as it is, you have to drop your elbow straight down to your crotch to squash the twelve boners your body is trying to give you. “Oh,” is your eloquent response. Then, “It’s not just that.”

“I’m listening.” You don’t need him to tell you those things, but it helps.

You actually smile a little, but it quickly fades as you try to put this into words. “I only really figured out because I—there’s this guy.”

“Ah. _This guy_.” John’s dad smiles right back at you, but his is broad and genuine. See, this is why you can’t talk to Bro about these things: Bro’s expression would have mocked you, but John’s dad is all encouragement and pride. “Tell me more about him.”

“He’s, uh.” You got this, Strider. Your tongue darts out to wet your lips; your hands start twisting in on themselves in your lap. “He’s a lot older. Maybe twice my age.” What’s twice seventeen?

“Dangerous, Dave.” But there’s a hint of collusion in the twinkle stuck in Mr. Egbert’s eye.

“I know, Mr. Egbert.”

“Please,” and his voice is the softest and kindest you’ve heard it. “Call me Dad.”

Elbow to the groin again, because fuck if it isn’t hot imagining calling that out. Somebody has a kink and that somebody is you, holy shit you didn’t even realize it. “Dad,” you try out. You try to look up, into his eyes, but it’s too intimate. He’ll know. He’ll see.

“So, what else about this mystery man of yours?”

You swallow, trying to get the words to fall out from where they’re whirling in your brain so you can catch them on your tongue and spit them out into the silence. “He lives pretty far away, too,” you tell Dad. “Like, not as in tank-of-gas far, but as in timezones far.”

“Has he encouraged you with any of this?” You can’t tell whether he sounds actually interested or just concerned.

“I can’t tell. I mean, I want him to, so fucking obviously any kind of attention I get from him is just gonna—“ You make an expanding motion with your hands and an explosion noise with your mouth. “Pchooooo. It’s so hard just—just being around him, talking to him, because…”

“You’ve met this man in person before?”

How many times have you slept over at John’s place? “I’ve known him for… a few years,” you settle on. “I didn’t realize it was—what it was—until, I don’t know, a few weeks ago?” How long have you been planning this? “But yeah, I mean, I’ve met him in person and everything, it’s not like he’s some fucking Internet predator.”

Dad brings up his hands, steepling them in front of his face as his brow knits. “And does he know about your feelings for him?”

“What are feelings?” you say glibly. “We just don’t know. No, seriously, he probably doesn’t, I mean, come on, I’m just a kid,” and wow, your self-esteem just completely dropped out, lost signal, weeooo weeooo you are having a personal crisis over here. “I don’t get what somebody else would find so interesting with this, look at me—“

“Dave.” Once again, you fall silent, but not because Dad’s commanding—because he’s kind. “You’re a fantastic young man. You’re a good brother and an excellent friend. You’re loyal and creative, and you have a lot of potential. You excel at a great many things. Why would you discount someone’s attraction to you?”

Okay, you feel like you had all the air punched out of your lungs. Nicely. In a nice way. Holy shit, is that what he really thinks of you? “Because I don’t deserve it,” is your well-articulated answer.

“Dave,” Dad says again, and you actually shiver at hearing your name safe in his mouth. He rests his hands on your shoulders as if to calm you, and you can feel the heat from his palms radiating through your shirt, into your skin, warming your bones. When you look up, his eyes are deep and rich and you never want to look away. “Never say you don’t deserve things. You do. You deserve so much. And perhaps…” This time, it’s Dad swallowing; you’re transfixed by the movement of his adam’s apple in his throat. “Perhaps this older man feels he isn’t capable of giving you what you deserve.”

Oh, shit. Your heart drops out through your stomach and leaps into your throat, leaving you feeling like you’re gonna throw up. He knows. He knows he knows he knows. Instead, you just word-vomit. “It’s not what I deserve,” you say hotly. “Dad, there are things I want, and I can’t stop thinking about it, and I’m pretty much a shitty human being for wanting what I want but, fuck, I want it anyway, I don’t care…”

“Never say that about yourself again,” Dad tells you, his hands moving up from your shoulders to caress your neck and frame your face instead. “I never want to hear you speaking that way about yourself. It’s perfectly all right to want things. I want things, too.”

Your mouth is dry again. “Like what?”

“I want to hear the things you want from me.”

“Shit, are you fucking for real?” The laugh that bubbles out of your chest is nervous, downright hysterical. “You don’t wanna know, Dad—wait, you said ‘me’, you meant you,” your ruse is up, he knows, he knows and he wants to go along with this anyway.

“I need to know what you want.” His voice is a deep rumble in the room, a threat of savagery.

It makes a shiver go down your spine. “I want,” you say, then lose the power to go on. “I want you to—do things. Whatever you want. I’m right here. Right in front of you.” Is his face getting closer to yours, or are you just imagining things? “Take my breath away, make me feel like a natural woman or whatever the fuck those dumbass ‘80s songs say, I don’t care, I don’t even know what I want, I just know that it’s you…”

“Dave,” and this time your name comes out almost like you’re strangling him. “You had damned well better mean what you’re saying.”

You feel like you’re going to fall. To save face, your hands come out and land on his knees. Every point of contact between the two of you makes sparks fly under your skin. “I mean it,” you grit out. “Every single fucking word.”

Dad closes the gap between you and gives you your first kiss.

You’ll never tell him that, of course. And it’s not like you have any frame of reference, but this is the most fucking awesome kiss of all time. He starts out soft, pressing his lips to yours, and then he delves in, breathing you in, and when you breathe him in you catch his shaving cream and his shampoo and the kind of fucking laundry goddamn detergent he uses and it’s all you can do not to just climb in his lap right now.

Then he presses forward with his tongue, and you instinctively open your mouth to him, and you have no idea how it gets better but it does, _it really fucking does_ , and you whimper into his mouth when he touches his tongue to yours. His hands are so large and hot, his fingers cupping around your neck while his thumbs stroke at your cheekbones, and you just want to press forward and take as much as he’ll give you.

You need more. More contact. More kissing. More pressure. Your hands slide up Dad’s legs, and oh, you can tell they’re muscular and strong beneath his sensible Dad slacks. For a moment, you almost feel bad that you’re probably going to wrinkle and ruin them, but then you realize—you don’t care. You really cannot find it within yourself to give even a single iota of a gold-plated shit.

Are both of you going to fit in that chair? Dad seems to want to make it work as much as you do. His hands slide down, down your front, and just when you grab at his shoulders, he clutches at your hips and gets you to climb into his lap, and holy shit, you’re up close and personal with him, chest-to-chest as you both struggle to catch your breaths. And yet you’re still reluctant to let go of that kiss.

Dad’s hot hands slide around your sides, lighting your nerves on fire, your skin awash with sensation, before he actually—he slides his hands down and gropes, just gropes, firm and solid and oh god you’ve never been touched like this before and it’s the hottest thing that’s ever happened to you. His hands on your ass guide your hips closer to him, exactly what you didn’t want, because you involuntarily tip against him and start practically humping at him like an overeager dog.

“Shh,” he murmurs into your ear, and then he’s licking, oh fuck, he’s licking the rim of it, kissing at your earlobe, sucking a kiss into the spot right under your ear. “Steady.” And he squeezes your ass in his hands again, kneading it with his fingers.

Steady? All you want to do is fall apart with the shakiness spreading up your spine, but he soothes that, too, taking one hand away from groping you so he can pet along your back and sap out some of the tension lingering there. You practically melt against him, throwing your head back and trying to stay quiet even as you moan. Of course, he takes it as an invitation to plant his mouth along your throat, and each breath has a long, low vowel sound with it now.

“You have no idea,” Dad’s saying low in your ear as he lets his hands roam over your body, “how delectable you are like this. The things I could do to you…”

He’s said only one curse word during this entire encounter, and yet he’s talking more provocatively than anyone you’ve ever heard. “Tell me,” you say hoarsely, your voice ragged-edged with need.

“Drag my teeth along your skin,” he says, and you love how low his voice is, because every word reverberates in your bones. He skims his teeth along your collarbones and it’s all you can do to hold on, your arms tight around his shoulders. “Leave fingerprint bruises all over you.”

“Fuck,” you choke out. His hand slips under the bottom hem of your shirt, and you feel dizzy with the sudden skin-to-skin contact. It’s like he’s trying to bruise you already, and you only want to encourage him. Greedy for sensation, you catch his face and kiss him again.

It only means he mutters into your mouth the filthy things he wants to do to you. “Strip you and watch how you react when I touch you,” he’s saying now. You’re hardly even listening to the words, just the tone, and it’s a velvety coating over a sharp sting of lust. “Crush you to me and grind up into you.”

“Oh my god, holy fucking christ,” is all you have the audacity to say. He pulls your shirt off, but it’s difficult, seeing as you don’t want to let go of him and don’t want to part your lips from his. “Fuck, Dad, more…”

He pulls you down onto him with his hands on your hips, and like this, you can feel—you can feel everything, you can feel him hard against his hip and against your own straining cock, you can feel the tension in his legs as he holds back on you. When you roll your hips, you hear a long, low, desperate bellow echo in the room before you realize it’s actually you. “Can you feel what you’re doing to me, Dave?”

It isn’t fair. He’s clothed and he’s telling you the most sexual things and you’re half-naked and wild-eyed and crazy with need. You can’t keep up with him, even with his maddeningly slow pace. To show him you were listening, you reach a hand down between you to cup his length through his trousers in your hand, and _fuck_ even through clothing you can tell he’s well-proportioned and near goddamn perfect. “Let me feel it,” you ask him, rubbing at him as best you can.

“You’re so eager,” he says, but he’s not mocking you. In fact, it sounds like he’s encouraging you. Fuck, it sounds like he’s damned proud of what he’s doing to you right now.

“You’re fucking fantastic,” is your excuse. You plant a series of sloppy, open-mouthed kisses up his neck, knowing it probably isn’t doing anything for him but trying to give back all the same.

He holds you close, crushes you to him, and you swear your heart’s trying to hammer its way out of your chest. If it weren’t for his arms around you, you’re sure you would be falling apart. You’re so close, so connected, and when he rolls up against you, you can’t help but cry out. “Let me touch you, Dave,” he murmurs into your ear as he keeps his hips on yours, forcing the two of you to rut together.

“Yes, do it, please, oh my shitting holy tittydicking jesus fuck!” Even that aroused word-mash of cursing can’t come close to how it feels just to have the pressure of Dad’s hand against your boner through your sleep pants. He outlines it with his fingers, practically jacking you off through the fabric as he does it over and over again. “Fuck, I need—more, I need…”

It trails off into a strangled whine when Dad takes his hand away. Instead, he drags it down your stomach, outlining the trail of hair leading down into your sleep pants before his fingers slip under your waistband, against bare skin, against wiry curls. When he finally takes you in his hand, even though he’s barely holding you, you moan something incomprehensible. “Look how easily you come undone for me, Dave,” Dad says.

How can he keep talking? It’s fundamentally unfair that he’s so experienced and you’re not, that he’s taking advantage of your teenage-boy hormones and your crazed lust in order to do this to you. “Dad,” is all you have the presence of mind to say. You’re calling out a fatherly nickname in the middle of making out, what the fuck is wrong with you? “Daddy,” you try again, and you can feel yourself throb against the palm of his hand. Okay, you are definitely fucked in the head, but you’d let him fuck you there when it feels this damn good.

“Just like that,” he says, his tone soothing and soft. His grip finally closes, not too firm but instead on the verge of tantalizing, and he starts to stroke you. Up, down. Up, down. Constant and slow, like a tidal wave. “That’s it, move with me.” You didn’t even notice you were moving your hips with his motions until he pointed it out like that.

“Oh, god,” is really all that’s in your head right now. Most of your bloodflow is down south, and all you can think about is pushing against the clenching heat he’s giving you. You can nearly feel the precum dribbling from you as he does this, because as you keep rolling your hips, your movement gets smoother, easier, a little more lubricated with each stroke-thrust.

Somehow, Dad’s still keeping it all together, kissing expertly at your neck while he jerks you off with his one hand. His other—he’s groping at your ass again, except that’s not all he’s doing. That other hand slips under your sleep pants, too, and they fall down over your hips to land around the middle of your thighs, exposing you to the bare air of the room. “Shh, relax,” Dad says, and you didn’t realize how much you were shaking until he told you indirectly not to.

Your mouth’s open; you keep licking your lips to keep your mouth from going dry, but it isn’t helping. Each new movement from him makes a new moan rise, until it’s a constant sound stuck in your chest. You must seem so desperate right now, but if desperate will get you what you want, then sure, you’ll be his desperate little thing. Dad’s one hand keeps up a constant rhythm while the other gropes at you again, griping closer, closer, until he’s practically parting your asscheeks and— “Whoa!”

“Easy,” Dad says to you, like he’s the fucking Dave whisperer and all he did was accidentally startle you. Startled is right, though, because he has the pad of his finger up against your hole. Not pressing, just threatening, hot and pressured and rubbing just that tiny bit.

You never thought about someone else wanting to do that to you, let alone wanting to do that to yourself. But the more he touches you, the more he rubs and strokes and soothes and pets, the more worked up it’s getting you. “Dad, Daddy, please…” How long have you been babbling like that? How long has it been?

“Are you ready to?” The little whimper of ‘mmhmm’ into his ear has to be confirmation enough, and if that didn’t do the trick, you make sure to thrust up into his hand for good measure. His pace speeds up just the tiniest bit, his hands more possessive of your body now, and he starts to be a little more vicious with his teeth on your throat the closer you get. “Let go for me, Dave. Just like that…”

You’re vaguely aware, from your position roughly a fuckjillion lightyears away, that you’re spurting over the top of another man’s hand. That it’s another guy jacking you off and touching you like you wish you could touch yourself. That it’s Dad, that it’s John’s dad, who got you this far, who got you to fall apart. Mostly, though, your brain is full of fuck and simultaneously nothing at all, and your fingers prickle with residual sensation as you claw at the shoulders of Dad’s dress shirt as you pulse in his grip.

When you catch your breath and look down, you’re instantly embarrassed and ashamed. That’s your cum. That’s your fucking cum splattered all over his shirt like that. You’ve ruined it. “I’m sorry,” you mutter. You’re surprised you haven’t spontaneously combusted yet, with the embarrassment-heat threatening to burn you alive.

“It’s okay,” Dad tells you. His hand comes up to soothe you, petting your hair and massaging your scalp. How did he know that was your weakness? “Why don’t you clean it up for me?”

Oh, fuck. How perverted is this bastard? “You don’t seriously mean,” and you drop it right there.

“I’m not angry with you,” he reassures you. “I just want you to clean up your mess.”

When he says it like that, you’re willing to do just about anything for him. You’re not quite sure how to fold in on yourself to reach the bottom half of his dress shirt, so you end up hunched in on yourself, then fall to the floor out of his chair, knees already picking up rugburn from the carpet. “Like this?” and somehow you find the energy to practically wink up at him, smiling smugly, before darting your tongue out to lick at one of the wet patches you left on his shirt.

Dad actually bites his lip when you do that. Good. Finally it’s you getting the reaction out of him. He hasn’t cum yet, you realize, and he must be ready to blow, after seeing you, after what he did to you. “Just like that, Dave, perfect,” he mutters above you, and though you’re hardly even touching him, he seems to light up at the contact every time you muss his shirt further with your spittle.

Eventually, every wet patch is about twice as big as when you started, and there’s a bitter taste clinging to your tongue that isn’t just chemically-treated fabric fibers. All that’s left is the little bit you managed to get on his trousers. Once you press your tongue there, though, you can tell that might have been a terrible idea, because Dad’s hands come up to grip the arms of his chair so hard you can see the outlines of his knuckles. “Bad?”

“Good,” he reassures you. “Keep going.”

You’re not sure how much more there is to keep going to, but you can get an idea from where you just licked: Dad’s still hard, straining against his trousers. With shaking, numbed hands, you reach up to undo his belt, treating it carefully, before working on the fly of his pants. “Sorry,” you apologize again, because you’re sure your clumsiness isn’t as endearing to him as you wish it was.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for.” When he says it like that, you actually believe him. Once you pull down his zipper, Dad helps you the rest of the way, pulling down his trousers so he’s nearly naked in front of you. The only thing between you and his cock is his sensible white briefs. Fuck, and you can practically see him through there, a small damp spot right around the head of his cock, oh, fuck, this has been getting to him same as it’s been getting to you. “Go ahead.”

You didn’t realize you were waiting for permission until he said that. When he does, though, you move forward, unsure what to do but knowing you have to do something. Your hands come up to lay, hesitant, on the tops of his thighs, but since you don’t know whether you’re allowed to really touch him yet, you don’t quite know where to go from here. You settle for putting your mouth on him through the cotton of his underwear, tonguing at his cock through the fabric and soaking it with your spit in a pathetic attempt to give him a blowjob.

“Dave,” Dad says, and the word sounds almost sacred in his mouth. You know this is affecting him—he’s throbbing, evident to you even on your tongue, even with something separating you from true contact. “I’m going to—stay still…”

When he finally pulls off his underwear, your mouth starts watering all over again. You’ve never seen a more perfect cock in your life. Then again, this is only the second cock you’ve ever seen, the first being your own, so you don’t have much room to compare. It’s already glistening with the thin sheen of spittle you’ve already painted onto it, and you feel the urge to lick at him, even as he holds himself in his hand.

Your tongue lands in a hot, broad lick along the part of his dick that Dad will let you reach; the other part is in his hand, and he’s frantically jerking off. “Close,” is all Dad can grunt out, and then a mangled “aah.” You almost don’t realize why—how stupid can you be?—before you feel it, on your face, spurts of his cum landing thick and hot and dripping down as he continues to shoot off on you, marking you, fuck, you’re his now if he’s doing this to you, and why is this so hot that your dick tries to get up again and manages to only dribble out a pathetic squirt of cum itself?

Dad breathes heavy for a few seconds before he falls back in his chair; you can hear the thud of the back of his head as it meets the leather. You’re almost afraid to ask, but you need the contact again. Pulling up your sleep pants to cover the worst of your own mess, you crawl back up Dad’s body to get into his lap again, resting close to him as his breathing gets more even and your heart stops racing quite so much. “It’s weird,” you realize. “It got weird. I made it weird.” But why would you sit here in the awkwardness, then?

“Please don’t feel awkward around me,” John’s dad—Mr. Egbert—Dad says. Before you realize what’s happening, he’s wiping your face off, and you want to thank him for such a small gesture but you don’t want to break the moment.

He leaves his now-filthy handkerchief in your hands, but you press it back against him, trying to put it in the pocket of his shirt. “This is yours,” you tell him. “You keep it.”

“No,” he says firmly. He isn’t being mean, though. He just balls up the handkerchief and puts it right back in your grip. “I want you to keep that.”

It’s probably because it’s disgusting to him now, a reminder of the things he shouldn’t have done. But when you bring it up to your face to get the rest of the sticky off of your skin, the cloth smells like him, like soap and cologne and Dad, and you’re keeping this forever and never washing it. “Thanks.”

“You deserve it.” And even though you don’t believe him one damn bit, he takes away your will to resist by stealing the words off your lips with a kiss.


	2. Tempo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's by way of apology, you guess.

You could have sworn that John told you to come over today. Could have sworn it, got text messages with his number on them, got pinged on Facebook. You’re checking your phone to be doubly-triply sure when John’s dad answers the door. “Dave,” he says warmly. Though he’s not smiling, you can hear a hint of it.

“That’s nice,” you say dismissively. Where’s that text? “Where’s John?”

“I’m sure he’ll be home soon. Why don’t you come in?”

You’re about to say no. That you can just use the Egbert transportalizer to get home from school. But then you look up, and you actually pay attention to your surroundings, and holy fuck you forgot how blue Mr. Egbert’s eyes are, and is that chocolate chip cookies you smell? “Uh,” you say eloquently. It’s followed by a shrug. “Yeah, why not.”

Mr. Egbert swings the door open further, allowing you entrance to his home. Even though you’ve been here three times a week since you were thirteen, the house feels totally different when John isn’t here. Empty, almost. It’s a weird change from the apartment you share with your brother—too cramped, would feel better if you just… weren’t there. Not that you feel unwelcome, but it’s clearly crammed to bursting with just two people.

It’s also a lot more cluttered. Feels like people actually live there. The Egbert house is… neat. Tidy. “I feel like I can’t touch anything,” you grumble under your breath. Place is like a museum, you swear. While you make a beeline for the kitchen, you still have to pass Mr. Egbert’s office, and just seeing its interior makes your stomach do something you don’t recognize. Body memories? Just the hint of it has your face flushing; you hide it using your whole hand to push your aviators up on your face.

“You’re always welcome here,” John’s dad says, voice deep and warm as ever. He actually heard you? Doesn’t seem to matter. He still wants you here, apparently, even though John is nowhere to be found. “Now. Why don’t you tell me how your day was?”

There are so many retorts on the tip of your tongue, everything from ‘you’re not my real dad’ to ‘go fuck yourself’ to the lewdest story you can make up off the top of your head. Instead, you let your backpack drop from your shoulder with a loud thud that seems to echo in the kitchen; if you didn’t know better, you’d think Mr. Egbert had flinched at the momentary violence. “I swear, John texted me to come over, I’m not just here because…” You drop the sentence, scrolling through your phone again.

Mr. Egbert’s brow contracts. His hand comes up to his chin, as if he were reflexively putting a pipe to his mouth. “John left his phone here today.”

You freeze. Dare you look at him? He’s putting on an excellent act of appearing puzzled by this. “Let me guess,” you say slowly. “He leaves himself logged onto Facebook, too.”

“Well, yes—“ Mr. Egbert brings his hand up to cover his mouth before he can say any more.

You let out a little snort, throwing your phone in the general direction of your school stuff before crossing your arms and mouthing off to your best friend’s dad. “So, uh. You gonna tell me exactly what’s going on here, Mr. Egbert?” Because if you didn’t know better, you’d say Dad Egbert used John’s phone to text you for a booty call, but that couldn’t possibly be right…

“Please. Call me Dad.” He says it with the same inflection as—before—but it sounds so different with the sun out. Not so covert, not so collusive. “I… John usually has robotics on Tuesdays.”

“First I heard of it.” You’re so, so tempted to roll your eyes, pick up your shit, and leave.

“He won’t be home until around five—please, Dave.” You’d reached down to grab a shoulder strap of your backpack so you could high-tail it home, but that soft little word, the way he says your name, makes you stop in your tracks. “I wanted to speak with you, in a private environment.”

You look at him over the rims of your shades, arch your eyebrow at him a little, but you drop it, decide to hear him out. “Well?” What’s so important that he has to talk to you without his son, your best friend, in the room?

Because when you’re aiming at elephants, missing with that giant shotgun is going to create some massive collateral damage. “I wanted to apologize.”

“So apologize.” You’re starting to feel a little cornered. That was a one-time thing… right? You weren’t expecting anything like that to happen ever again. It was in the past, as a nice thing to remember, but not to be spoken of again.

Mr. Egbert sighs heavily. You’re not used to seeing him fidget, but he undoes the buttons at the cuffs of his shirt, starts rolling up his shirtsleeves. Okay, that’s not fair, because when he does that you can watch his large hands work, follow the movements of the muscles in his arms. “I fear I may have overstepped my bounds,” he says quietly. His vision is focused on his hands—not on you.

So why do you still feel pinned? “Uh. No?” Do you really have to come out and remind him that—what happened—was your idea? “Dude, if anyone did any stepping it was me. I never should have said anything.”

Dad Egbert leans back against the kitchen counter, sighs a little bit. “Now, don’t say that. I’m glad you felt comfortable enough to share something of that magnitude with me.”

“Except you’re not,” you point out. Okay, yes, those cookies look awfully tempting. When you go to grab one, it puts you in the same narrow aisle as Mr. Egbert, leaning back on the kitchen island until you can feel the quartz countertop biting cold into your bony hips. “You regret it. Don’t you?”

“Of course not,” he says, too easily. Does he really mean that? “I only—that is, I mean to say—“

And you thought _you_ were awful with words. “Listen, if you’re just going to say sorry, forget it, okay? It’s just a thing that happened and we can forget all about it, water under the bridge or over the road or whatever the hell that saying is—“

“I meant to ask if you wanted to continue.”

“—we can just pretend it didn’t happen and let that giant fucking elephant traipse around your house and wreck your shit—wait, what?”

He’s staring at you again. His eyes are blue fire, burning away your blustering attempts to put up a shield against him. “My apology is for not being more straightforward.” You love his voice, the way it rumbles and reverberates in your very bones. “I realize, at your age, that you may not be able to read nuances—“

“Nice,” you say around the cookie in your mouth. “Nice going. Insult me for how young I am. That’ll make me like you!” The sarcasm is like a sord cutting through the silence between the two of you.

Mr. Egbert takes in a sharp breath, and you’re afraid you’ve just released the kraken, but his hand comes up to pinch the bridge of his nose and he lets that breath go in a long, loud sigh. “I’m not sure how to talk to you.”

It’s the most honest you’ve ever heard him. At the same time, this leaves you at a loss for words. You don’t know what to tell him to tell you. “Just fuckin’ spit it out, goddamn,” you mumble, spitting out crumbs from your own mouth as you shove another cookie in there. (Those things are good.)

“Dave,” he starts out. You grip the counter with your free hand to help prop yourself up; sometimes, that sound makes you literally weak at the knees. “I want to continue what took place a few weeks ago.” There it is. _There it is_. The words you were hoping he’d say this whole time.

“But?” There’s an unspoken conjunction at the end of that sentence; you can nearly see it hovering in the air.

“And,” John’s dad corrects you.

You lick your fingertips. “And,” you acquiesce.

He seems awfully focused on the sight of your tongue on your fingers. “I,” he starts. Blinks. Starts again. “I’m afraid you underestimate yourself. Undervalue your own talents.”

“Dude.” You have to interrupt him here. “I’m an asshole.”

“You are not,” he cuts right back over you.

“Wanna bet?” Your hand curls in on the counter; it’s starting to get hot under your grip. As your words get more incensed, your body starts to lunge forward. “I’m going behind my best friend’s back here, just to spend time with his dad. This is some seriously fucked-up stuff.”

You only see it in Dad’s face for a split-second before the reaction comes; he meets you in the middle of the small space, bringing his hand up to your face so his palm covers your mouth and your nose is at the crux of his thumb and his other fingers. “Don’t,” he thunders, “say that about yourself. Ever again.”

It only makes you feel small. Pathetic. Like scum on the bottom of his shoe. Any fight that was still in your frame is gone now. Dad has that uncanny ability to do that to you. With John, you two bicker endlessly, picking up one fight days after you thought you’d laid it to rest; it’s the only reason you’re still contentious about who would win in a fight, Spiderman or Deadpool.  With your brother, some simple disagreement will turn martial in a split-second—however long it takes one of you to flash-step and glitch out a sword to battle out your disagreements.

But Dad? Saps the strength from you. Makes you feel weak. Because if you can’t fight, you feel worthless. And as your raised hackles go down, as your shoulders fall from around your ears and you try to step back into your own space, Dad’s hand comes down from your face. He doesn’t stop touching you, though, tracing over your lips too briefly with his fingertips and leaving them tingling before he runs his fingers down your throat and eventually lays his hand on your shoulder. Hot. Heavy. You’re not going anywhere. More to the point, you don’t _want_ to go anywhere. “Dave,” and is that a tone of exasperation? “Please believe me when I say—I realize that you are crass and somewhat unmannerly.”

“Here we go again.” You roll your eyes at him; it’s the closest you’ll come to being outright disrespectful. “Let me guess—you’re gonna start insulting me again because I can’t help how old I am.”

“But,” Dad interrupts you, and since when did his voice gain this earnest sheen to it? “I can see the young man you are becoming. You are capable of so much, and yet—you don’t seem to realize. I want to help you.”

Your Lalonde-radar is pinging like crazy. Daddy issues off the port bow, ready cannons, fire at will. His words are making you feel things. Things you’re not used to. You shrug out from under the kind hand still resting on your shoulder, try to evade Dad even though this kitchen is only so big and there’s no real place you can hide. “So what, I’m just your little pet project?”

Dad catches you before you can worm away too far—except now, his hands are at your waist, pinning you to where you were standing. You can feel their heat through the thin cotton of your tee shirt; the same heat is radiating in your cheeks. You’re trapped. And the worst part about it? You _like it_. “I want you to believe in yourself like I believe in you. Because you are capable of so much—“

“Oh my God.” The laugh that comes out of your throat seems a little forced. “Believe in the me who believes in you? Dude, what are you, my bro?” There’s a reason he wears those dumb pointy anime shades, after all.

“Dave, would you kindly keep quiet so I can explain myself?”

“I think you explained plenty.” You’d physically wriggle, but that would mean Dad’s hands would move on you, and feeling them would do—things—to you. “You’re trying to justify this to yourself because you’re making me a better person—it’s not working. Just fucking—“

Dad takes the opportunity to interrupt you in the middle of a sentence and kiss you.

His lips on yours are light, soft. Now that he’s this close, you can smell his aftershave on his skin. His fingertips put just that little bit more pressure on your body. He breathes you in, and you melt. It’s your inexperience. If you’d ever kissed someone other than him, you’d be more composed. You’d be Strider cool and you’d know what to do and you wouldn’t feel so helpless and your heart wouldn’t be hammering this hard and you would be able to catch your breath.

Mr. Egbert draws back; he’s still close enough that your noses almost touch, but he’s giving you enough space in case you want to push him back. You don’t. He has to know you’re not going to, because you don’t bring your hands up from where they’re white-knuckle gripping the countertop—you couldn’t unfurl them if you wanted to. “I know you are a good person, Dave. I want you to believe it as much as I do. But until then—until you know your own worth—I am going to remind you. In whatever way I know. And this…” He drops his forehead to butt up against yours, holds it there. The intimacy is unprecedented. “This is one of the few ways I know of getting through to you.”

“Oh.” There’s really no arguing with him. None of your futile attempts are going to convince him of what you know, deeper than your bones and more intrinsic than your heart: you are irredeemable. You are not the hero. You are not noble. All the time in the world won’t redeem you from a world of heat and suffering.

But for just a minute—just long enough—you forget. You actually believe that fucking swill John’s dad is trying to shill at you. You believe it because he’s not using words to say it—he’s telling you in a way you’ll actually listen, with the pads of his thumbs rubbing little circles on your stomach through your shirt and your silent plea that won’t he just strip you and touch you skin to skin already.

Instead of fighting him—with words, with violence—you bring your hands up to his hair, thread your fingers through and watch the salt and pepper swirls twine around your fingertips, pull yourself up and crush your body to his and try to kiss him as expertly as he kissed you. It’s a lost cause from the start, but you have to at least try. This is your resistance. This is your rebellion.

Dad’s hands encourage your body to form to his, one going to the small of your back to pull you as close as he can, the other cradling your face and keeping you from retreating. He’s way too good at this. That should be fucking illegal. But with just one kiss he’s already stirring body memories, things you told yourself to forget, but he doesn’t want you to. He wants this to keep going.

And it does. It really fucking does. He takes his mouth away from yours, but only so he can trail his lips along your jawline, down your neck. It burns—the heat of his body? Or the reaction of your own? Does it matter? It feels good all the same, and you bare your neck to him so he can run his tongue up your throat, capturing your earlobe in his mouth.

You don’t know what to do with your hands. One starts clumsily pulling at Dad’s tie, trying to loosen it; the other combs through his hair, pulls at it again. Dad lets out a harsh breath when you do that, and when you do it again, that sigh has the hint of a sound behind it. You hope you remember that for later. As it is, Dad’s trying to overwhelm you. It doesn’t take much, because he’s the only person you’ve ever kissed or anything, but you feel weak for giving in.

“Good,” he’s mumbling against your neck, “so good, Dave,” and his voice resonates with pride you thought he reserved only for John, but at the same time it’s not like that at all, more powerful than meaningless reminders to a kid who already knows how awesome he is. Hearing that kind of praise makes your heart do a thing that you can only liken to a bird being shot out of the sky.

Dad’s hands finally get under the bottom hem of your shirt; you push your body into his touch, wanting him everywhere all at once. “Fuck,” you whisper to the empty kitchen, not quite believing what’s happening.

“Language,” Dad admonishes. You know it’s not serious, though, because there’s a genuinely amused chuckle following that word. “John isn’t home. You may be as blasphemous as you please.”

“Oh God,” you take that opportunity right away, because Dad brought his hands up under your shirt and started touching your nipples okay those are. Those are sensitive. Wow. Okay. How did he know to do that? It doesn’t even matter, you arch against the counter and it bites into your back and you feel like you’re going to fall if you don’t keep holding on.

“You react so wonderfully.” Hearing that from him makes you resolved. When he pinches, you moan—a little louder than you might have otherwise, but hey, he likes your reactions, right? “Let me strip you—I want to see.”

“Uh.” Your gut reaction is to say no. No one else has really seen you like that—not even Bro, and the two of you have walked in on each other in the fucking shower before.

Dad seems to sense your pause. “All right then. Here. Let’s make this fair.” He pulls off his tie that he loosened, lets it fall to the floor. That, right there, is very un-Dad-like, and that he showed so much impropriety in front of you as to litter his clothes just anywhere makes you feel a little more comfortable. But it’s not just the tie. He takes both his hands away from you, starts unbuttoning his shirt, and good golly miss Molly.

Because he’s muscular. And he’s—well, hairy isn’t a nice word for it, but there’s a rugged masculinity to his physique that hides under his clothes. And he’s letting you see it. This is better than anything you ever envisioned when you were alone at three in the morning with your cock in your fist and his name on your lips. “Hhhhhhh,” comes out of your mouth weakly. He’s fucking _hot_ and that should be _illegal_ because this is _your best friend’s dad_ and god you’re so fucking attracted to him wow holy shit.

He doesn’t let you think about it for too long before he manages to turn your brain off again with another of his fantastic kisses. This time, his hands under your shirt are a little more purposeful, pulling it up to your armpits before he retreats just enough to pull it off over your head. Okay, now you feel inadequate. You’re wiry and lean and you know you’re more flexible than Bro, but you’re nowhere near as masculine as this hunk who’s staring at you. “Your form is impeccable,” Dad whispers to you softly, fingertips tracing every muscle you’ve built through long years of sword training as he rains kisses onto your bared shoulders.

You think that’s his way of telling you he thinks you’re attractive. Whatever that was, you’ll take it. You’re barely listening to the words by now, just the tone, and it’s the same warm inflection he always uses around you, like by speaking he could infuse you with his own strength of character. At this point, you’re under his thrall, feeling weak under his hands. Maybe he’s just tearing you down to build you back up later.

Or maybe he’s trying to obliterate you entirely, because it feels like he’s worshiping you, his mouth slipping down from the slopes of your shoulders to pepper kisses on your chest. One hand slips down to rest on your hip for a few seconds, then slips behind and gropes. Purposefully. Not too hard, but enough to let you know that his touch is no accident. It moves you up in his grip, getting you to nearly sit on the counter, but it also lets his mouth get lower, and his fingers—“Ahhh ah ah ah—“

Not pained, but surprised, because he’s got one of your nipples between thumb and forefinger and he’s gently pinching, twisting, enough to send ripples of sensation up and down your spine. And now you understand where his mouth was going, because his mouth—his mouth—is—on the other—and his tongue—hot and wet and swirls and you lose your mind, keening and curling in on yourself so you can keep him just where he is because “jesus fuck that’s perfect!”

It’s over too soon, but it still leaves your mind muddled. “Your body is so responsive,” Dad murmurs against your skin, his mouth moving off but further down. You’re losing your balance, and his hands encourage you to lean back, back, until you realize he’s got you laid out on the island, pinned under his hands and his mouth, and the countertop is so cold against your back and you’re burning from the inside and the heat of Dad’s body is just bringing it to the surface.

Being with him is—fluid. It feels right. You don’t notice the skips and gaps between movements like you thought you would. Yeah, there’s a few scratches sometimes, a needle skipping the groove, but the two of you mix well together. Your vocals, of course, but his backbeat, his bass, the beat of your heart keeping time. Except you seem set to _vivace_ and he’s plodding along at fucking _adagio_ , how can he stand to be so patient?

Because the two of you together are _con fuoco_ , and you’ll reach your _coda_ together even if it kills you to keep it together. He’s playing your entire body like a musical instrument, getting you to make sounds for him you’ve never made for anyone else before, and he doesn’t seem likely to stop, dragging his mouth further and further down and kneading your ass in his large hands, bringing them around and tracing the skin showing above your jeans before—

“Whoa.” He’s working on the front of your pants. That’s. Okay. You didn’t realize he’d—want to—that when he said he wanted to see he really fucking meant it.

He stops right away at the slightest hint of your discomfort. His hands aren’t even shaking. (You hate him for that.) “Is this not okay?”

“No, it’s…” You swallow. It’s hard to words right now. “I just.” He’s doing that to get at your dick, and you can’t quite wrap your head around that.

“I wanted to show you just how much I believe in you. How much I’m willing to do for you. But if you’re at all uncomfortable—“

“No!” Dad freezes. “I mean—no, I’m not uncomfortable. Look at me. Comfy as can be. So comfy I’m gonna melt into this fucking freezing-ass counter, what is this, Satanic ice?”

“But you feel so warm,” Dad says to you. For emphasis, he moves up your body, lets you feel the weight of him hovering over you. God he’s so hot—attractive, and he’s radiating heat over you, and you feel like you’re going to burn alive, you’re so embarrassed about your inexperience, you’re so turned on.

Dad keeps working on your pants diligently, his mouth roving along your throat. At one point he runs the edge of his teeth along your skin, and it makes you prickle. He follows up and nips at your throat, and you make an undignified little noise. That’s that shit you never knew you liked until now. Your brain can’t keep track of everything he’s doing—three focal points is three too many when your entire body is resonating at his direction. “God that’s fucking…”

With him this hot and heavy over you, you almost don’t realize that he’s pulling down your pants and your boxers all in one go. You didn’t realize you were so hard it hurt until he exposed you like this. Your dick is practically straining towards him, eager for attention, already slick and ready for anything. “Would you allow me to fellate you?”

“Yeah.” That sounds like a good word to say, even if you didn’t quite process his request. Your entire body is pretty much made of ohgodyes right now anyway. (What does that f-word even mean, anyway?) It’s looking like a good choice from the get-go though, because those wonderful fingers are closing around your cock just like you remember, giving you a few strokes but mostly giving you rubbing friction. “Mmmyeah Dad—“ Your dick pulses in his grip when you say that, God it turns you on and you’re so fucked in the head but he can go right ahead and jam his dick into it and fuck you there as far as you care. (Where were you going with this metaphor?)

“Put your hands in my hair,” he instructs you gently. “You can tug as much as you like.” He reaches down, circles your wrist with his free hand, gets you to unclench from the countertop and bring your fingers up to his hair again. For being so perfectly groomed, it’s remarkably soft, and you have no problem following his lead.

You accidentally tug right away because Dad is moving down on you again, tracing the same path he laid before. He’s still so patient, making you squirm, because you love what he’s doing but he needs to keep touching your dick you’re so ready to blow—

Dad tongues your navel, pulls back, and then abruptly his mouth is—it’s—

He’s kissing the head of your dick and licking away a little precum and then he’s pushing his mouth down over you “holy fucking shit” what does he think he’s doing you’re not worth this but it feels so fucking good you don’t want him to ever stop.

Your mouth is running about a billion miles a minute. You can’t even begin to tell him what this is doing to you. His mouth is hot and slick and there’s the swaths of his tongue and the texture of the roof of his mouth and then it’s not just the pressure from the ring of his lips around you he’s hollowing his cheeks and now you understand why it’s called sucking off because it feels like he’s trying to drink your brain out of your skull through your urethra and you are so fucking okay with that.

“Daddy,” and you end up clenching your fists because yeah, it’s that good, your toes are fucking curling in too. His hands move up your body, frame your ribcage and roam up to your throat before crashing back down to massage at your thighs, and the entire time his mouth won’t stop sucking and his tongue won’t stop swirling and his lips won’t stop moving.

You pull his hair a little in your enthusiasm. You don’t mean to, and you’re about to apologize, but Dad—yeah. Yeah, he fucking moans. Maybe you don’t have to say you’re sorry, maybe you should just do it again. On purpose, but not on purpose, so he can’t tell—and when he takes more of you than he’s done so far, you pull again, and of course. There it is. That’s a guttural groan that starts in his throat and you can feel it in your fucking dick it’s that deep. There’s a growl building in his chest, and suddenly you realize just how out of your element you are.

Because this guy might be John’s dad, but he’s no one to trifle with. He’s strong, he takes no prisoners, and when he’s like this he’s downright predatory. It makes you shiver, not just with what he’s doing to you right now but for the unbridled potential that’s laid out in front of you. You don’t even know what you want, but you want Dad like that. For you. You want to bring him down at the same time as he’s trying to lift you up.

And eventually, the two of you are going to ruin each other, you’re sure of it, but right now he’s making a right mess out of you. You’re getting closer and closer, louder with each passing dip of his head and swipe of his tongue, and you have no idea how he’s doing what he’s doing but he’s so good at it and you just want to—“Dad, ‘m gonna, unh,” you try to warn him.

To your everlasting infuriation, he pops off of you, leaving your dick pulsing and wanting. God you’re so close, you could probably blow if he just said the word. “Ask permission.”

“Let me,” you say desperately.

Dad instantly sinks back down on you, nodding to show his assent, and you—

absolutely flood his tongue and you’re so ashamed but it feels so good and this is the hardest you’ve ever blown in your life and Dad just strokes it out of you with his tongue and keeps it going as long as he can and by the time it’s over you’re hoarse and trying to catch your breath and your mouth is abnormally dry.

 The room feels too bright. Are you just now opening your eyes for the first time since Dad went down on you? Your shades are askew from your face, which explains a little. Everything feels unfocused, especially the boundary lines of your body, but you can focus enough to watch Dad cough discreetly into one of his handkerchiefs. (Yeah, he was grossed out by that. But why would he have let you if he was grossed out…? It’s too much to think about.) Point is, he’s not swallowing that. You kinda don’t blame him—you don’t think you would either.

He sounds a little hoarse when he next speaks, but his deep baritone is still so soothing to you. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” you try to say, but it comes out as a croak. You have cotton-mouth all the way to your throat. “Yeah, I’m—you just fucking blew my mind, I mean, my dick, but also—“

Dad just smiles. “Let me get you a glass of water,” he offers. You don’t particularly feel like fighting him, so you let him dote on you a little. “Have a cookie.”

“Like I didn’t already,” you tease. (Can you tease him? Is that allowed?) You hop down from the counter, but your feet are still a little unsteady; you can hide your dweeb moment while Dad is at the sink, and it gives you an opportunity to pull up your pants. He still has his shirt off, so maybe you can keep yours off, too. “Uh. I.”

“Yes?”

Okay, now that he noticed you were fumbling over your words, you don’t exactly know how to put this. “You want me to, uh.” Words. Spit them out. “Return the favor or anything?”

That enigmatic smile almost makes you want to punch him. How can he be so serene after he just wrecked you like that? “I’m quite all right. Please, have a drink.”

You gladly take the glass from his hands and swallow down the whole thing. (Hey, maybe you’re the swallowing type after all. This is all purely theoretical for now, of course, but…) “What now?” you catch yourself saying out loud.

“You can stay and wait for John to come home,” Dad offers. “I doubt you’d want him to see you in this state, though.”

“Yeeeaahhh, no,” you drawl. You’re sure you look sex-mussed right now if Dad’s saying that. “And besides, I mean, what was I doing waiting for him to come home? Just hangin’ out with his old man? He’s never gonna believe that shit.”

“My point precisely,” Dad agrees. “John does have robotics on Tuesdays, though.”

“He never told me about that.” You’re his best friend. Aren’t you supposed to know everything about him?

Dad just shrugs. His placidity makes you want to punch him sometimes, just to get a reaction out of him, but of course you can’t do that to anyone but your brother, and Bro’s volatile enough as it is. “I was under the impression he feared some sort of teasing campaign from you involving the disparaging of hobbies you consider dorky.”

“No, I mean, I thought he was a shit programmer.” You’d never tease too far with John. What if you actually hurt his feelings? You’d never be able to forgive yourself. “He makes fun of me enough for yearbook as it is.”

“Ah. I was. Wondering if perhaps you might informally join another extracurricular activity.”

“Yeah, I heard you saying words, but I don’t think that was English.” You shove another cookie in your mouth.

“Well. Ah.” John’s dad is kind of cute when he’s awkward like this. “If you joined a student organization that met on Tuesdays, your brother would expect you to be at school on Tuesday afternoons, would he not?”

You might not be Jade Harley-level genius, but you can connect the dots easily enough. “And John would still be at school, and… _you_ would be my extracurricular activity.”

“You ought not to put it so rudely, but yes, that was essentially my meaning.” Dad’s eyes are watching you closely. Almost too closely.

You finish your cookie. When you lick your fingertips again, Dad just keeps staring. (Mental note: do that again in front of him later, in a lewder setting.) “Tell you what,” you say, spraying crumbs and pushing away from the counter, “you call me or text me when you want to get together. Do it yourself, not through John’s phone, I’m not putting up with that bullshit again.”

“That was rather underhanded of me,” Dad admits, “and I apologize.”

“Nah, no big, I was just real confused for a while.” You grab your backpack, heft it onto one shoulder. “Guess I’ll see you around.”

“Wait. Before you go.” You stop in your tracks, and before you can really process what’s happening, Dad’s closed the distance between the two of you and put his arms around you.

He’s giving you a hug. You… don’t really get many of these, and you don’t know what to do. He can probably feel you stiffen up in his hold, but you can at least pretend to reciprocate, bringing a hand up to awkwardly pat him on the back. After what feels like too long, Dad finally lets go, and you can make it to the Egbert home transportalizer. “Later,” you call back.

“You’ll hear from me soon,” he promises.

By the time you throw your backpack down in your own bedroom, you have a text from an unknown number. All it says is:

**Never forget what you are capable of.**

You save it to your SIM card before you delete it.


	3. Rhythm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You’re used to hot drips across your skin and raw edges sewn together. Hell, more than a few times you’ve sprained your fingers from shit like that. This, though...

It’s rainy. You hate that about Washington. It gets in your shoes, seeps into your socks, gets the things in your backpack all soggy. It’s ruined three and a half pairs of headphones by now. (The other half is in your left ear, threatening to go the way of its fellows.)

Still, you have to walk to get to where you’re going. You almost called it “home” but that’s not true, not exactly. Not _your_ home, anyway. Something close, though, because the Egberts have never been shy about welcoming you in. Still, by the time you show up to the front stoop, the hood of your sweatshirt is soaked through and you probably look like a drowned rat.

John’s dad seems glad enough to see you, though. He opens the door for you, smiling. “Oh dear. Seems as though the heavens have opened—“

“I don’t wanna talk.” You shoulder into the house, shoving your way past him, not even caring that you just got his perfectly clean shirt dirty. By now he should be able to _see_ the bad mood hovering over you, as obvious as a storm cloud and just as tempestuous. You drop your backpack in the kitchen like you always do, start shrugging out of your wet clothes, fuck you feel gross and unfit to be seen and yet it’s Tuesday and Mr. Egbert is expecting this and you want it but you don’t want him to _say a goddamn word_ to you because you don’t want reminded about his beliefs.

Mr. Egbert follows you back from the front door, his voice entering the kitchen before he does. “I do wish you’d at least tell me how your day was—“

“I don’t. Wanna. Fuckin’. Talk. About it.” You’re not sure how much more obvious you can make it. Your shirt rides up on your stomach as you peel off your sweatshirt. What the hell are you supposed to do with this?

“Here.” Mr. Egbert—Dad, Dad, he lets you call him Dad—takes it from you. “I’ll put your clothes in the dryer.”

“Uh, no? I ain’t got anything else that’s dry.” What, he expects you to just hang out around him naked? It would make you feel even more scrutinized, and that’s the exact opposite of what you want, you just want to feel safe and comforted and right now even Dad’s niceness is chafing your asshole.

Dad sighs heavily, like your stubbornness is just too much for him. “Please. I insist. I’ll bring down a robe. I don’t want you spending too much time in wet clothes.”

“I’ll be fine—“ No, you won’t. You’re already shivering, cold to the bone. You fucking hate Washington so much, you’d rather roast alive in Houston than put up with this bullshit.

“You’re like to make yourself sick. I won’t let you do that to yourself.” Weird. Bro usually doesn’t give a fuck about shit like this, figures you can take care of yourself. Dad, though, Dad seems intent on—babying you? Taking care of you. It’s kind of a nice change, really, although you feel like he sets his expectations too high for what you’re capable of. You’re nowhere near as great as John, just a poor substitute, the hero’s sidekick. “I’ll be right back. Go ahead and strip.”

Before you can tell him not to, he’s gone. And you’re dripping wet in this ultra-clean house, feeling like you’re making it filthy with your mere presence. Definitely with your mind, because all you can think about, when looking at your surroundings, is what happened a week ago. What happened right there, on that counter. And while Dad might not have any ulterior motive for it, he’s getting you naked right the hell now, apparently, and you’d be an asshole to say no.

You’re down to your boxers by the time he comes back. The robe he drapes around your shoulders is thick, flannel, and it smells like cologne and pipe tobacco. Okay that’s absolutely not fair does he have any idea what those scents do to you? At least it’s relatively easier to hide a boner in this than in your jeans, and finally you peel your boxers off, too, letting Mr. Egbert have your clothes. “That’s better,” he says, and there’s a hint of a genuine smile on his face.

Like he’s proud of himself for taking care of you. “I don’t need taken care of,” you call out to him as he retreats to the laundry room. (What kind of house has a separate room for laundry?)

“Need isn’t precisely the right word, no,” Dad agrees with you. You hear the quiet rumble of the dryer as it starts to work on your clothes. “Although I do feel that, at some times, everyone deserves to have a helping hand.”

“Yeah, well.” You’re back to sullen grumbling. To hide from him, even though there’s nowhere to go, you wrap the robe around yourself; it’s so large on you that it doubles over in most places, and you can hide most of your face behind the collar if you pop it up. Your shades are still on, too, giving you one more safe place where you won’t be so judged. And when you flop onto the couch in the living room, you make yourself very small, folding into one corner, getting a throw pillow over yourself. (You’re also freezing. Hopefully this shit will warm you up.)

“Now.” Dad follows you, sits what feels like right next to you. Looking at his perch, though, you realize that it has to be his throne. It’s a perfect Dad chair, really, sleek black leather looking well-worn but not weather-beaten. Probably buttery smooth to the touch, and you can nearly smell it from where you’re sitting. “Why don’t you want to talk?”

“Paging Dr. Freud,” you mumble. Might as well fucking lay out on the couch if he’s going to psychoanalyze you. You don’t give him the satisfaction. “I don’t even know why I came today.”

“It’s Tuesday. I thought we agreed—“

“We did,” you acknowledge before he can say anything else. You don’t like that slightly hurt look on his face, and you don’t want it there ever again if you can help it. It’s like he was looking forward to this or something, actually looking forward to seeing you, but the thought seems so absurd that you dismiss it out of hand. “Don’t look at me like that, we can do plenty of shit without fuckin’ talking about it.”

“I would prefer to have your entire attention while we pursue our common goals.” Well, that’s a way to put it, you guess. It’s a little domineering, but fuck if hearing that in his voice didn’t turn you on. “If you don’t tell me what’s on your mind, I won’t be able to provide what you need.”

“What I need is a swift kick in the head.” Bro likes to say that about you. A lot.

“I’m sure that’s not true.” Dad brings his hand up to his mouth, cradles his chin while he rests his elbow on his knee. It gets him further into your personal space, and you feel as if you’re being inspected for defects. “What could you do that would be bad enough to merit that kind of treatment?”

“I don’t know, say, I failed a test or something.”

“I see.” Dad’s eyes are unreadable. You can’t see his mouth. His voice is too serious for your liking. “Was this the test you had on Friday?”

“Yeah—wait, how did you—“ John. Fuck that goddamn snitch. “I don’t wanna talk about it,” you repeat, though you’re starting to sense that it’s futile.

“Why not?” The hell does he mean, why not? You’re not sure whether he already knows the answer and wants to hear you say it, or if he really doesn’t have a clue and needs you to elucidate.

You go for the latter. More than that, you go for shock value. “Because when I bring this shit up at home, it ends in a strife on the roof and I get royally schooled by my brother and he lets Lil Cal leer in my face and reminds me to do better at school if I ever wanna make something of myself.”

“Ah.” What’s that noise supposed to mean? Or maybe Dad is being straightforward—you still wouldn’t know what to do with that, used to layering your words with bullshit so you can say one thing and mean another. Dad’s honesty is too raw for you and you don’t know what to do with it. “So you’re expecting corporal punishment when you disappoint your guardian?”

“Uh, yeah?” You’re pretty sure that’s what you just said. “Kinda grew up that way. Raised by the sord and all that.”

“If you’re used to some sort of discipline, I believe I can provide you with that.” Dad’s eyes are bright, his voice rumbling low in the room; you wish he’d let you see his mouth so you can divine his expression. (This is why you wear shades. Don’t want people reading your eyes.) “Failing schoolwork isn’t especially behavior I want you to repeat.”

“Okay. Fine. Swat me on the back of the hand with a ruler and we’ll forget we ever had this conversation and do something else instead.” It was the way he said ‘discipline,’ you swear. That, and apparently you have a hair trigger for boners when you’re around this guy. God this is so messed up that he lets you call him a fatherly name and he used that D word you are in way over your head and yet you just keep fucking going.

“Oh, no,” he says. His voice alone is threatening to undo you. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t be any kind of punishment at all. Though I’m sorry to say I won’t be engaging you in combat, either.” A joke? No way. You almost don’t believe it, but Dad lets his hand fall from his face and shows you his amused grin as he pulls himself out of his chair and stands above you. Then he starts doing that thing again, that thing where he undoes the cuffs of his shirt and starts pushing it up and shows off his fuzzy, muscled forearms god damn it that shit is unfair. “I haven’t done this in years,” he ponders out loud, loosening his tie once his shirtsleeves are rolled up.

Okay, that’s. You’re a little scared right now. With the way he’s looming above you, you’re genuinely scared he’s going to strike you in the face, especially since he just pushed up his sleeves and he looks like he could deliver a mean pimp slap—though he probably doesn’t use that pimp arm as often as he could. “Please, not on the face, I’m too pretty to die,” you deadpan, though there’s a shiver of fear seizing up your spine.

“Of course not,” he agrees, and his voice is too warm it’s going to smother you it makes heat flare in your face and your chest and yet your hands and feet are still so cold. When he sits next to you on the couch, you realize you have no idea where he’s going with this, until he pats his thigh with his hand and you start connecting some dots. (You’re not a total moron, after all.) “Lay across my lap.”

“Are you seriously gonna spank me?” Still, you do as you’re told, stretching yourself out across Dad’s thighs and getting your hips in that valley between his legs. Your self-control only extends so far, though, and you end up rolling your eyes a little.

“As I understand it, the act is both disciplinary and corporal—and fitting for an adult to give to a child.” Oh my god. Oh holy shit. You’ve read about this shit in the bowels of the internet and the way Dad’s talking right now has your stomach churning in knots because it can’t. It can’t be like that—oh, but it is, and the heat prickling under your skin confirms it. “Have you been spanked before?”

“… no.” It had never even really occurred to you that parents do that to their kids. On the other hand, it was _incredibly clear_ to you that two consenting adults in the privacy of their own homes would do it to each other. (You obliquely thank Bro for his indirect sex ed, the loud smacks of skin on skin that you’ve been able to hear from his bedroom from time to time.)

Dad tsks at you, like he expected you to know better. “Since this is your first time, I believe I’ll be lenient—although I do hope the message sinks in.” His hand comes hot and heavy on the back of your head, travels down your neck until it meets the flannel robe.

And he starts to peel it away, still soothing down your spine, and it’s incredibly intimate and revealing and though you aren’t exactly cold you quiver under that touch. It isn’t long before he has you stripped, hips laid out across his lap, and you try to keep your body perched on your elbows and knees so he won’t be able to tell how fucking fierce your hard-on is right now. “Am I supposed to fuckin’ count ‘em, too? Jesus.”

“No, nothing so trite as that. Although I suppose we’ll have to come to some sort of agreement as to how many you’ve merited.” The only thing left on your body is your shades—and when his hand moves back up your spine he traces his way up your throat and takes even that small comfort away from you, too.

You compensate by ducking your face into your arm, hiding it in the crook of your elbow. You don’t know what to do with your hands. “Just start already,” you mumble into the couch.

Dad’s hand darts down to swat the back of your knee. Like a reflex, you hiss, and your foot comes up off the couch so you can cradle the hurt spot with your joint flexion, keep him from getting at it again. It wasn’t _that_ painful, but it sent a clear message, and just in case you were dumb enough to have missed it, Dad clarifies. “You are not, under these circumstances, to tell me what to do. Is that understood?”

“Yes.” You cringe to yourself. Already letting him down, god you’re such an asshole.

“Good.” His voice isn’t so cold this time. His hand definitely isn’t, and it comes in contact with your body more gently this time, encouraging you to get your foot out of the air. You can hear your own heartbeat in your ears, breath echoing loudly in your skull. “You can do this,” he reminds you quietly.

All you want to do is tell him to shut up and get on with it, but you know you can’t, or this is going to continue far longer than it has to. Your body trembles with barely-contained tension, and you nod, hiding your face further in the couch cushion.

Dad isn’t nice about it. The first blow lands solidly on an asscheek, heavy and open-handed, and while the impact only lasts for a fraction of a second the sound of contact lingers in the room, loud and obscene and taunting you with its echoes. You flinch, jerking forward, instinctively seeking to get away from it, but at first it doesn’t hurt so badly. Then—

You’re used to sharp shit. You’re used to cuts—thin little needle slices barely big enough to draw blood with only a little beading at the edges, all the way up to gashes that nearly slice to the muscle and leave you with a tourniquet around your thigh and peroxide bubbling pink from your shin while Bro threads a needle and dips it in alcohol. You’re used to hot drips across your skin and raw edges sewn together. Hell, more than a few times you’ve sprained your fingers from shit like that.

This, though. The initial hit isn’t so bad—but it’s not the hit itself, but what comes after. You can still feel Dad’s hand _burning_ on your skin, the prong of each finger like a perverse kindergarten Thanksgiving turkey standing out in your mind-map of your body. The pain takes a while to bloom, like he beat you so hard your bones are just now registering it, and it starts from where his palm was and radiates out to each fingertip and it’s searing and tingling and you don’t know how he expects you to take any more. Just this much is making you hiss.

He doesn’t stop, though. The second blow comes down not too long after the first, on the other cheek. The breath you just took in comes out more ragged than you intended, and it’s the same, the beginning contact, the middle pain, the end burn. It’s the open-handed way he does it—it makes his hand feel even larger on you, because your brain fills in the spaces between his fingers with even more hurt. Even the air feels like it stings, salt in an open wound and it’s so different from any pain you’ve ever experienced before and _you are so fucking hard right now_.

Dad doesn’t let up, not in the slightest. Three, four, five, in the same rhythm as the first two, still hitting you solid on your ass but never in the same place twice, and you can’t help it. You whine and you writhe and tighten your arms and try and grab the couch for something to hold onto, something to mitigate the sensations, but everything slips away from you and you can’t get a grip. More to the point, Dad doesn’t let you, taking your hands away from where they’re clawing at the cushions and taking both your wrists in only one of his hands and though his fingers don’t quite meet you still feel very, very small.

He gets your hands over your head, and you clasp your fingers together like you’re praying, because let’s face it, that’s the only way you’re getting out of this situation with any dignity left. Six. The fire under your skin started where his hands are abusing you but has spread up your back; your face is flushing, and you can feel pain-wet starting to gather behind your eyes. Seven. You can’t breathe. With every impact your entire body jostles, forcing the air out of your lungs, and when you try to recuperate you end up choking on nothing because Dad leaves you absolutely no time.

Eight. The force he puts behind his blows drives your hips into his thighs. He has to be able to feel how fucking _aroused_ you are, has to be able to _see_ the flush on your face, how humiliated you are. Nine, and the friction on your dick is almost as painful as the slaps on your ass, though it’s starting to get easier and you realize why—because you’re leaking pre onto Dad’s sensible trousers and making a mess out of him and you’re the scum of the Earth, you are.

Ten. You didn’t realize you were counting, but you’re ready, so ready, entire body coiled like it’s ready to strike, except it’s the one being struck because you’re waiting on another blow, waiting for Dad to continue his cadence, and it never comes. It never fucking comes. Instead, his hand meets your abused skin a little more gently, and he fucking—ugh, you keep undulating under his hold because he’s just massaging in the marks, now, letting the heat from his hands bring up the bruising you’re so sure is taking place.

Dad lets go of your hands, but you’re reluctant to take them away from where he moved them. He runs a hand through your hair and are you fucking crying? There’s something leaking from your eyes and your chest keeps heaving and your breath sounds more wet than you’d like but it hurt, damn it, it fucking _hurt_ , not the kind of pain you know and not just bruising your body but telling you this is what you deserve, this is the kind of thing you merit when you fuck up as badly as you did. “’m sorry,” you mumble out, trying to steady yourself. “’m so fuckin’ sorry.”

“Shh,” Dad whispers gently. His hand won’t stop rubbing circles on your skin. Maybe he’s trying to get the hurt to rise up and out, but what it’s doing instead is sinking in. You’ll be lucky if you can sit for the rest of the night. (You hope no one notices.) “You did very well, Dave. I’m proud of you.”

Yeah, uh. No one’s ever really told you that before. And he hasn’t made a single comment about your face or the glassed-over look to your eyes when you stop hiding it from him or the dampness on the couch cushion from where your chin was pressed into it. Bro would have told you to nut up or shut up by now, sewn you up and reminded you where the arnica was and tell you he won’t be the one putting a Band-Aid on your booboos. But Dad—

Dad lets you be weak. Dad lets you be a child. And it’s so fucking _freeing_ not to have those expectations on you that your entire body sags, tension gone. And Dad just keeps petting at you, soothing your marred skin, fluffing your drying hair and getting the last of the rain out of it, and you just want to stay here and hide until you stop feeling quite so useless. Definitely until your boner goes away.

And of course Dad wouldn’t give you that solace. “Come here,” he says, and before you can rearrange your body he starts to do it for you, gathering you in his arms until you’re sitting in his lap. The raw skin of your ass is against his knees, but at least Dad cradles that in his hands, getting you close enough so you can rest your head on his shoulder. Your hips reflexively twitch because the head of your cock is barely, just barely, touching the fabric of his shirt, a sensation so elusive you wonder if it’s even happening at all. “Let me take care of you.”

Your instinctive reaction is to say something snarky in return. Of course, that’s before you see Dad messing with a bottle of lotion on the side table. “Oh, how nice, you don’t want me to be totally asschapped,” you say sarcastically.

“Of course not. That would be irresponsible—and downright rude, if I do say so myself.” Dad squirts some into his palm, greases up his hands, and then miracle of miracles it’s like the sting gets taken out of your skin, finally soothed away. “Does that feel alright?”

“Yeah,” you breathe out. Even touching you like this, in a way meant to be nonsexual, is body contact you don’t get but maybe once a month if you’re lucky. Being this close to someone else is terrifyingly intimate for you, and it doesn’t help that this dude turns you on like no other. “Dude, are you gonna get one of those hands on my dick in the next century? I swear it’s rocket propelled by now. Launch control, we are ready for lifdoff—“

“No.”

“Aw, come _on_ —“ You stiffen, bite the inside of your mouth, taste copper and swallow it down, because. No way. _No fucking way_ did he just. Oh, but he _definitely_ just—just swept the pad of his finger over your asshole and you’re about forty percent sure you don’t want it there. (The other sixty percent of you has watched enough gay porn to know where this is going.)

Dad, of course, is an ultra-suave motherfucker (at least, you’re sure that if you had a mom, he would have fucked her. Maybe he did fuck your ectomom. NOT ON TOPIC), especially when he touches it _again_ and now you’re a hundred and ten percent sure that wasn’t an accident. “Tell me if I’m going too far.” His voice is so low it makes your whole body shake and the way he whispers it into your ear makes your whole face heat up.

“Nnnnnnnn,” you start out with, a noise pathetically close to a whine. Okay, so maybe after that first time with Dad you tried putting your own finger up there, but there wasn’t a fireworks display to the tune of the Hallelujah Chorus or anything. Maybe it’s not supposed to happen until you jam a dick in there. Who knows? “Nnnn—no. You can keep goi—nngh…”

Maybe the difference is the lotion, because it’s not so much like rubbing sandpaper on your sensitives when Dad does it. There’s friction, yeah, and heat, and it’s almost unbearable, but not quite, and since you know how it feels it’s a little easier to give. “Good, Dave, you’re so good,” and god damn but that four-letter word makes your dick jump and it shouldn’t make you so hard just to hear basic praise like that.

He’s just barely got the tip of his finger in you and it’s sore. Not sharp like a cut, not painful like a bruise, just a little uncomfortable. It’s not that bad, really, and it’s only sore because everything is so fucking _sensitive_ that you can feel every millimeter Dad moves like it’s a hundred miles. Honestly, compared to him brutalizing your ass? You’ll take it. Still, your fingers grip at his shoulders like a lifeline, wrinkling his shirt in your hands. “Dude, this isn’t—ahh, really doing anything for me.”

“Be patient.” That low tone, the threat of a promise, makes you shiver. For now, Dad doesn’t really… do anything. Well, he moves his finger in a circle, putting pressure on your entrance from every angle, and it slowly works him deeper. You don’t really want to think about _where_ his finger is going, especially because sometimes it’s just hard to keep up with _what_ he’s doing. Every spiral leaves you feeling a little dizzy. It doesn’t take a genius to realize how people could find this pleasurable—so many nerve endings, so much to just _feel_ , that them being stimulated is a little like receiving a surprise text with your phone on super-vibrate in your back pocket.

The last thing you want to be right now, though, is patient. You went through your penance, and now it’s time for praise. A reward. Right? This doesn’t feel like a reward yet, just another intrusion, except Dad’s going slow enough that nothing hurts. At all. Nothing feels forced. It’s like he’s waiting for, not you, but your entire body to give him permission, and you slowly unfurl, bit by bit, and you can feel it get easier for him. “Come on—“

“Do you want me to touch you?” Okay, that got you to shut up. If you keep complaining and acting like a little bitch about it, this isn’t going to go the way you want. “I do mean what I say, and I mean to take care of you. Let me.”

You nod, your face brushing up against his. Your heart is trying to hammer straight out of your chest; if you concentrate, you could swear you feel Dad’s, too, but that might just be an overactive imagination. Everything’s so intense and you feel pinned and trapped but more than that, you feel _safe_ here, like with Dad you can just _be_ and he’s not passing judgment, just trying to refine you, like trying to see the figure hidden in a hunk of marble. It’s a comforting thought, to think of him as a sculptor, which means you’d be his work of art. Something priceless he decorates his life with, maybe.

Your brain likes to go off on tangents. Dad doesn’t let you have that solace, making you focus on physical sensations to tether you to here-and-now. And with one effortless slide of his finger, he moves in you and brushes up against something that makes you bolt upright, the first time you’ve ever had perfect posture in your entire life, and you make a little alarmed noise that sounds like an exclamation point stuck in a duck’s throat. “Good?”

“What the fuck _was_ that?” Your lips are close enough to Dad’s ear that it’s like you kiss him with every word.

Dad just chuckles, the sound like thunder in his chest; you can feel it rumbling under your hands. “You’ve been good for me today. I wanted to reward you.” And from inside you, his finger strokes up against that spot again, purposefully rubs against it, and you were totally unprepared for that you feel dizzy and half-sick with the intensity of the sensation and you have to hold onto him or you’re sure you’ll explode because it feels like every nerve ending under your skin is fracturing into white. “I’m glad you enjoy this.”

“Don’t stop,” you sigh out, trying to breathe. It’s so weird: Dad gives you space, but invades it like it belongs to him. Dad gives you room to breathe and then takes your breath away. “Please,” you add on to the end, just to be polite, to make it seem like a request.

“Of course,” he says, like that much was obvious. He’s still very much in control, though, when the palm of his other hand skims down your dick and you feel like you might blow from just that slight amount of contact. “Tell me how it feels.”

“It’s like a chorus of motherfucking angels is flying up from my asshole to exit my mouth as I vomit a rainbow of glitter and unicorns,” is the first thing that comes to mind. (You’re not especially brilliant when it comes to these things.) Point is, it’s really fucking good, and just in case he couldn’t tell from your language, you move your hips with his hands, roll against his finger, thrust up against the teasing contact of his hand. How long have you been hard? Five years? Feels like, what with the speed Dad insists on maintaining.

Oh, but it draws out the delicious agony interminably, forcing you to cope with all these sensations that are threatening to undo you—are already discomposing you, taking away your legendary cool and leaving you a hot, flustered mess. “You do have such a way with words,” Dad says. A joke? _Sarcasm?_ No way. You’re learning that this guy has a sense of humor, and while it might not match yours, it’s so unexpected that it does get you to smile. Only, you know, that weird smile that’s open-mouthed so you can still pant through your grin and you make sure to show your teeth because god do you feel like you could _tear something apart_ right now.

It only gets worsebetter when Dad’s hand finally closes around you—but not enough friction, too light, treating you almost like you’re going to break, and though you feel like there are hairline fractures in your porcelain skin rubbing together and grinding deep in your bones you needneedneed to come and you cry out wordlessly, beyond even “please,” as he strokes you slow, inside and out, coordinating so smoothly it’s like he’s more machine than man, working you up and up and up.

His hand on your dick is making pornographic schlicking noises. His finger in you is putting constant pressure on that little spot. Your entire body is shaking, radiating heat, and then he whispers “now” and you didn’t realize you were waiting for permission but _you certainly have it now_ and you do as he says and it feels good to obey as you finally climax, hitting it so hard your dick just dribbles over his hand from the overpressure and he keeps working you through it, keeps moving with you, on you, in you, and by the end you’re trembling, giving him all you have and more, because he’s earned it from you, because you earned your own release, because he keeps calling you good between the frantic gasps you take and you breathe in the praise like you need it to live.

It ends with you slumped against him, entire body quivering from how much he just tore you apart. “Holy shit,” you whisper, more to yourself than anything.

Dad works his finger out of you, takes out a handkerchief, wipes up the mess you made of his hand. (What a mess, what an unholy mess, you feel the absurd need to apologize before you realize he actually asked for it and he’s cleaning it up himself and not making you do it, thank god.) And he just lets you rest here for a little bit, try and get your brain back in your skull, you were so sure you could fit all of it in here before, why does so much of it feel like it’s leaking out your ears? You’re naked and trembling and then Dad’s arms go around you and make you feel warm and it’s such a base kind of comfort, one you’re rarely afforded.

Little by little, you catch your breath. Dad rubs your upper arms with his hands, like he’s trying to warm you up. “That was—“ Words won’t do it justice. You’re not sure whether to follow up with an apology or a show of gratitude. “Wow,” you settle on.

“I’m very glad you enjoyed that.” It doesn’t sound like he’s saying that just to say it. Is there an ulterior motive? Does he really mean what you think he does? “I’m sure your clothes are dry by now, but I ought to check on them.”

When he extricates himself from you, you feel very isolated, there on the couch by yourself. The only thing you have to cover you is Dad’s robe, and even then it still feels like he’s clinging to you. You’re definitely not as cold as you were when you got here, but your ass is definitely the worse for wear. And after what just went down, you’re kind of tired. Physically worn out, yeah, but also tired of the bullshit that goes on in your daily life.

“Here we are,” Dad calls back from the laundry room. By the time he presents your clothes to you, he’s already folded them. He’s so precise; if he were your age, you’d call him a nerd. Still, it’s nice to have warm clothes after all that. “I believe it stopped raining, as well.”

“Sweet.” It’s kind of hard to make small talk with him, but you have to say _something_ , at least. “So, uh. When’s John gonna be home?”

“Very soon.” He almost sounds regretful, like he wants to keep you here but can’t risk it. “I’m sure you need to be getting home, as well.”

“Nah,” you brush him off. “My brother couldn’t give two shits where I’ve been or how long I’m out as long as I make it home in one piece.”

For a minute, it looks like Dad’s about to say something, but then he seems to think better of it and closes his mouth again. “Well, then, you’d best return home safely.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I will.” When you go to the kitchen to grab your stuff, you realize your backpack is still soaked, and your shoes aren’t doing much better. Well. Nothing you can really do about that now.

By the time you’re back at the Egbert family transportalizer, Dad has your coordinates programmed in, so you’re ready to head out. (Wait. How did he know that?) Once again, he has his arms extended. At least you know what he expects this time, and you actually maybe hug him back this time, though you’re sure you’re still shit at it. “I’ll see you next week,” he says as you zap off.

You’re too busy pulling your hood over your face. Somehow, it smells like him. You hope no one else notices—not only because you want this to be a secret, but also because you want to be the only one to be draped in this scent. It’s like taking a part of him with you, even back to your chaotic home life. And while Bro’s right to expect you to be able to take care of yourself, it’s nice to have that small bit of comfort every once in a while.


End file.
